Fresh off his phenomenal success with Tivoli Lovely at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, director Dean Bryant will be directing The Normal Heart for the Sydney Theatre Company, timed to coincide with the 2026 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Larry Kramer’s groundbreaking, semi-autobiographical and Tony and Olivier Award-winning masterpiece – set in 1980s New York during the first few years of the AIDS crisis – returns to Sydney Theatre Company in 2026 almost four decades after they first staged the work.
This production comes from the State Theatre Company of South Australia who featured the production in their 2022 season. The play is described as an epic exploration of a community in crisis and their resilience, courage, humour and love, and the 2026 production boasts an impressive case.
STC Artistic Director and four-time Helpmann Award-winner Mitchell Butel stepped into an acting role for the Adelaide production where his performance was described by Limelight as being “poetically heartbreaking”.
He will return for the Sydney production to once again play Ned Weeks, a New York writer determined to uncover the truth about the mystery illness affecting his friends and colleagues and the lack of government action in response.
Butel is joined by an astonishing ensemble cast – including Tim Draxl (A Place to Call Home, Sunset Boulevard), Keiynan Lonsdale (Love, Simon, Dance Academy), Nicholas Brown (Circle Mirror Transformation), Fraser Morrison (Grief is a Thing with Feathers) and Emma Jones making her Sydney Theatre Company debut.
The production will run from 9th February to 14th March 2026 at the Dramas Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. The play was last performed in Perth in 2023.
